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Project manager on Metron highrise tragedy faces criminal trial

A judge rules that Vadim Kazenelson, on whose watch four workers died after falling 14 storeys from a broken scaffold, will face trial.

Four people were killed, and one critically injured, when a scaffold on the east side of this Kipling Ave.building failed. The apparatus, which was used to repair balconies, appears broken midway and hangs from the side of the building. (Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star file photo)

An Ontario Court judge has ruled that the project manager on a highrise job in which four workers fell 14 storeys to their deaths and another was seriously injured will face a criminal trial.

Justice Geraldine Sparrow’s decision in Old City Hall Court on Thursday was hailed by Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan. He said he hopes it sends a chilling message to managers that they are responsible for their workers’ safety on the job.

No date has been set for the trial of Vadim Kazenelson, project manager for Metron Construction on the Kipling Ave. apartment balcony repair job that led to the deaths of four workers on Christmas Eve 2009.

Kazenelson was originally charged with criminal negligence causing death in October 2010. Thursday’s decision that he should stand trial comes after a preliminary hearing was conducted to determine if there was sufficient evidence to proceed to trial.

Ryan said Metron exhibited a “shameful failure to follow safety protocols,” leading to the deaths of Bondarevs, Aleksey Blumberg, Vladamir Korostin and site supervisor Fayzullo Fazilov, and serious injuries to Dilshod Marupov.

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The 12-metre scaffold that was supposed to support them broke near its middle at the end of the work day, after six men boarded it. The men who fell to their deaths did not have lifelines. The fifth man was not secured properly by a lifeline, but survived his fall, while the sixth had a proper lifeline.

In July, Metron pleaded guilty to criminal negligence causing death and was fined $200,000 plus a victim surcharge of $30,000, by Justice Robert Bigelow of the Ontario Court of Justice. Its owner and director, Joel Swartz, was not convicted criminally but was fined $112,500 for violations of the Occupational Health Safety Act.

That amounted to the biggest fine for corporate negligence causing death in Canadian history, but Ryan said it’s not nearly enough.

Thirty Occupational Health and Safety Act charges were dropped as part of last summer’s guilty plea to criminal negligence causing death.

“Bosses cannot be allowed to simply buy their way out of responsibility for criminal negligence when the lives of workers and their families have been destroyed,” Ryan said Thursday, adding that more that 400 Ontario workers die from work-related injuries every year.

Last August, the provincial Ministry of the Attorney-General appealed Swartz’s fine, calling it “manifestly unfit.”

When he ruled last summer, Bigelow said the financial penalty against Metron and Swartz represented three times the net earnings of the firm in its last profitable year.

Still, the fines were far less than the $1 million penalty sought by Crown prosecutor Ann Morgan.

Bigelow noted that Swartz had no previous convictions since incorporating Metronin 1987.

In an agreed statement of facts in last summer’s trial, the Crown and Metronsaid Fazilov knew that only two lifelines were available for the six workers and that he allowed workers under the influence of drugs to work on the project.

Toxicology analysis determined that three of the four killed, including Fazilov, had marijuana in their systems. The agreed statement of facts also said the swing-stage scaffold was improperly designed and had defective welding.

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